Flash MX Application Design and Development [Paperback]

Jessica Speigel (Author)

Book Description

Series: Voices (New Riders) | Publication Date: July 24, 2002

Flash-based web application development is an intimidating prospect even for intermediate/advanced Flash developers because of the lack of information available on tools and techniques. This book fills that gap by deconstructing three enterprise-level applications in an accessible way, the first book of its kind. This book gets right down to business with instructing how to create three of the most sought-after Flash applications: 1. Full-featured Flash e-commerce site 2. Multi-player game (including speech bubble chat & theme game rooms), and 3. On-line community with forum, real-time private messaging and search capabilities. In addition, this book will have a generous share of tips, pitfalls, usability notes and "why's." This book's accompanying source code allows the reader to tie the front end (Flash) they created to back-end programming (XML & Java).

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

An apologia to the Flash design and development community: 1. The following download --Missing Database Installer Files - Zip - 125kb - flashapp_patch_1.01.zip-- is available at the New Riders web site, on the Flash MX Application Design and Development book page, under "CD-ROM fixes". We dropped the ball when we did a final test of the final build of the CD; the installers from the previous build were inadvertently left on the tester's system at the same time that the installers themselves were accidentally left off the final CD build. As soon as we started hearing about the error we worked to get the files posted. 2. Trust us, there's no conspiracy to keep the errata out of your hands. New Riders wants you to know that we have been attempting to address errata issues by going through the author and having her address them. Jessica's a terrific pro and a wonderful leader within the Flash community, and will be working to get her own site live as soon as possible. She's experienced a few delays that none of us had anticipated and for that New Riders and Jessica offer our apologies. In the meantime, we've been compiling errata issues as they've come to us and are bringing some additional tech help onto the project to get any errata addressed, and as soon as possible. 3. Any errata aside, is the book a bit different in how it approaches its subject? No argument there. Jessica very much wanted a book that spoke to experienced designers--and not just developers--about application development within Flash. She conceived of the book through her interaction with the We're Here Flash forums: this is where she heard of a need for this type of book, where none existed. As a natural collaborator, she turned to Dylan Hasman for his able assistance in developing the Java servlets used to power the backend of the projects in the book, and to Jamie DeBella for her wonderful illustrations and animations. Todd Marks, of digitalorgansism, and Matt Wobensmith, of Macromedia, did technical reviews of the book in progress. If you have any questions about the Java Servlets that you'd like passed on to Dylan, or any questions or comments about anything else that you'd like me to pass on to the team, by all means let me know. Thanks for taking a look at the book, and thanks for giving us a chance to make it work for you. Steve Weiss, executive editor, New Riders, [e-mail].

From the Back Cover

Finally! Not just another Flash book. Build three of the most sought-after web applications from Jessica Speigel, co-founder of one of the most popular Flash resources-were-here. Flash MX Application Design and Development shows serious Flash developers how to create sophisticated, real-world applications using Macromedia Flash MX. By deconstructing three high-caliber, well-designed web applications, Speigel provides all the techniques necessary to successfully create these applications for your own web sites. In addition, each project is broken down into easily digested chapters that include explanations for using the supplied server-side code in a project-based format. In no time, you will create a full-featured e-commerce site; a multiplayer game featuring speech bubble chat and theme game rooms; and an online community complete with forum, user registration, and search capabilities! Flash MX Application Design and Development also serves as an excellent resource for Flash developers, including a generous share of tips, pitfalls, usability notes, and "Whys" that explain why the author employs a certain technique and explores alternative methods.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Publishing (July 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735712425
• ISBN-13: 978-0735712423
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,916,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars single most disappointing technical book I have ever purchas, October 18, 2002

By 

Gregory R. Stout "Gregory S" (NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flash MX Application Design and Development (Paperback)

This is the single most disappointing technical book I have ever purchased.

It will be obvious to anyone that an editor has not properly reviewed this book. It would seem impossible to have missed such basic and numerous errors in the text. It is equally obvious that the final code, at least for the first lesson on the disk, was not even run once because it can't function. For example, there is a basic error in one of the calls to a java class that prevents the project from working. It is unlikely that anyone who purchased this book to learn flash would be able to fix this mistake. This may seem like a petty complaint but realize this is just one of hundreds of error that will make it impossible for you to complete the lessons.

Unless you already skilled in the subject that this book is teaching its unlikely you will be able to get much out of it. When your projects fail to run correctly you will never know if they are your errors or one of the myriad problems inherent in the book's text, images, or code. How are you supposed to learn?

Frankly, the quality of this book makes me angry. For the 45 dollars Newriders asks you to pay you should expect the book to have at least a basic level of quality. It does not. It makes me twice as angry because I can see in this book the awesome potential it could have had, instead of being a confusing and frustrating text.

The editors of this book should be ashamed.

As a general criticism the book is not well written as a teaching tool. There is no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Speigel knows flash cold but that does not make her a good instructional writer. I do not blame Mrs.Speigel for this nature of the book because it is her editor that should have improved the quality of the text by helping her understand what sections need a little more explanation. A little more explanation mixed with the "do this do that" text would have made this a better book.

Do not misunderstand me. I would by another book written by Mrs. Speigel. But do not buy this one. There is much more wrong here than a few missing data base files. There is an absolute lack of pride.

Once again the editors of this book should be ashamed.

Problems
Descriptions for installing backend are poor and confusing.
Database files are missing but provided on Newriders site.
Replacement files have no explanation for how they need to be installed or that they must be placed into specific folder before they can be installed.

Major problems
There are basic errors in the database update files from Newriders. If you are lucky enough to realize these files are missing and get then from Newriders they still will not work.
First there are illegal characters in the product database SQL statements so that they can't be added to the database tables.
The second, and my favorite, in the Forum SQL data statement the field Category is misspelled Gategory.
Good luck getting these to work!

List of Errors
pg16-17 Setting up timeline. Steps are jumbled with some missing and lead a different end product than is described.
pg21 figure 2.3 i s incorrect
pg24 figure 2.9 is a progress bar not a scroll bar.
pg24 figure 2.10 is not the completed face clip, it's the Bar Left Cap
pg31 figure 3.3 is what the time line should look like after step 2 not 3.
pg32 steps indicated the wrong location to find the helpAgent file
pg32 doesn't tell you where in the library to create the new speechBubble movie clip
pg36 the cart object in step 6 doesn't exist. i think it's called viewCart
pg 37 step 2 the cartItems movie clip doesn't exist
pg 38 step 14 the arrow is already a movie clip
pg 38 either the instructions are incomplete or both graphic on the page are incorrect. It's hard to say
At this point I have stopped keeping track. Originally I was making the list for the editor but it is simply too much work to document every mistake this book has.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many errors and absolutely no depth, November 14, 2002

By 

Matthew Shirey (Pullman, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flash MX Application Design and Development (Paperback)

If I could give this book less than one star I would. I was very excited about this book when I heard about it. The back cover promises to "Deconstruct" three web applications. What it really does if give you a list or error filled instructions with little information about why things are being done. This book reads more like a poorly created web tutorial than a book authored by a professional "award-winning designer". By page 31 I had already encountered over a dozen errors in the writing and illustrations.

This book was obviously not tested in any way. My favorite error so far is on page 20 and 21. In the right column of page 20 on step 2 it reads: "In the Linkage Properties dialog box (shown in Figure 2.3)..." If you look at figure 2.3 on page 21 you see a picture of a "Registration Agreement"... doesn't look like a property box to me...

These types of errors continue on up at least to page 31 where I decided this book was better as firewood than an instructional tool.

I skimmed forward through the book and discovered that there is absolutely no information about the server side content. You get a short text file on the CD that tells you where to download the Java Development Kit (JDK), Apache Tomcat, and MySQL. It's up to you to find the instructions on installing them. Good luck, you'll need it.

I was most interested in the Flash based chatroom that the "Mult-Player Tag Game" web application promised. Unfortunately there is so little described about the server end that I doubt anyone could create their own using this as a guide. This book seems to promise to teach about the interaction between a flash web application and a server but it only concentrates on the flash client leaving server side information out completely.

The server side components exist as a set of three java servlet web apps from the CD. All you get are the class files. There are no source files on the CD so that you can see what is really happening on the server end.

Do not buy this book. It promises much but only delivers errors and shallow content. ...

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars don't buy this book, November 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Flash MX Application Design and Development (Paperback)

great learning tool my ... , this book has tons of errors, no errata, and no companion webpage. it was poorly written, and poorly edited, remind me never to buy another new riders book again. it doesn't matter how well you know flash, you shouldn't have to go through a book and fix all the errors to get something to work. from the publisher "she heard of a need for this type of book, where none existed." there are plenty of books out there that cover server side flash and flash app dev., if i were you reading this review, thinking about buying this book, i would go buy anything from the "friends of ed" series. they have excellent books, coldfusion for flash, php and advanced php for flash, flash and xml, dynamic content studio, i recommend any of those over this book. there are some others also, "reality coldfusionmx and flash mx integration", "server side flash," these are just a few well written books that are coming to mind.